This is not a post about Pulp Fiction), the movie. It’s related to the movie but not about the movie :)
About a year ago I heard two work colleagues exchanging lines from the famous Tarantino movie. What caught my attention was that these were not two average Joe that were trying to do something interesting. It seemed that the movie was something that remained well imprinted into their consciousness. Add to that that these people were otherwise smart people (I only work[ed] with smart people) who got their job done and were interesting enough to be around without annoying you.
Being unable to relate to their ‘cultural’ exchange I decided to watch the movie again. I saw it a long time ago and not being to remember all the juicy details that they were so excited about I though it was worth a try.
After I did that, I still failed to understand them. So maybe there was something wrong with me. I decided to leave pride aside and ask them what exactly about the movie they like so much as to lead them to associate lines from it to real world situations.
“It’s a really good movie”, ”Haven’t you ever wandered what gangsters talk about?”, “I don’t know, it is just cool”
That were the answers I got from the two colleagues. No, I never wandered what gangsters talk about? Have you ever wondered what bus drivers talk about? How about what porn stars talk about? Do you really care about things like that?
I decided to query other colleagues (during the lunch break - yeah right) about the movie. Most (I don’t want to say ALL) of them had a positive impression about the movie, still they couldn’t point to any element that made the movie so successful. WTF?
I reached the conclusion that the movie was just trendy at some point in time and these people had formed an opinion based on what people though about it. They were programmed by the public opinion about as what to think. Not very refreshing to think about it this way, yet it happens every day.